Types of chocolate – how to choose the best ones for cake decorating
While there are many types of chocolates available in the market, I will, in this section explain only the main types most commonly used in cake decorating. From my personal experience, I find couverture chocolate is much easier to handle and produces better results as compared to other types. I would strongly recommend that if you are new to decorating with chocolate, that you start with couverture first.
There are basically 3 main classes of chocolate:
Cooking chocolate
This is also known as unsweetened chocolate. It is the most basic form of chocolate, made of cooled and hardened chocolate liquor. Cooking chocolate is also the most commonly used type in baking.
There are also other types used for cooking, namely bitter chocolate, dark chocolate and plain chocolate. These chocolates are made with varying amounts of cocoa butter, cocoa mass and sugar.
Couverture chocolate
Couverture is another version of cooking chocolate. However, it contains a higher level of cocoa butter as compared to other types of chocolate.
The high cocoa butter content makes this chocolate smoother and gives its more strength, making it easier to handle.
Most often, the ratio of cocoa mass, sugar and cocoa butter in couverture chocolate is read as follows:
70/30/38 – extra bitter
60/40/38 – bitter
50/50/38 – semisweet
36/42/38 – milk chocolate couverture
White chocolate
White chocolate is made of cocoa butter, sugar, milk and vanilla.
Its creamy white appearance is contributed by the lack of chocolate liquor.
This is the most fragile of all chocolates and care should be exercised when handling this chocolate during heating as it is easy to burn and seize.
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